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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Showdown looming over IRRRB

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 5/19/16

REGIONAL— A possible end-of-session showdown over the governance of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation took a step closer to reality late last week, when the Minnesota House passed, 74-52, a …

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Showdown looming over IRRRB

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REGIONAL— A possible end-of-session showdown over the governance of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation took a step closer to reality late last week, when the Minnesota House passed, 74-52, a measure that would significantly reduce the authority of Iron Range legislators over the Eveleth-based state agency.

Gov. Mark Dayton has already announced his opposition to the measure, and the Senate has included a different set of changes in the tax bill currently working its way towards final passage.

The House bill, known as HF 3925, authored by Rep. Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar, would eliminate the current oversight board, replacing it with a nine-member advisory commission. It would also, in effect, replace some Iron Range legislators who have controlled the board for years with a more diverse membership. Under the bill, six legislators would still serve on the commission. They would be subject to appointment, with three members apiece selected by the governor, the speaker of the house, and by the Senate Subcommittee on Committees of the Committee on Rules and Administration. The governor, the speaker, and the senate committee would also each appoint a citizen member, who must live in the Taconite Tax Relief area and have experience in economic, community, or workforce development, or in natural resources and mining.

Currently, state law mandates that the IRRR board be composed of legislators from the taconite tax relief area, with the exception of a single senator, who is appointed by a Senate committee. The House bill would end that requirement and allow legislators from anywhere in the state to serve on the IRRRB. In addition, the current board has full decision-making authority over the agency’s spending decisions, which raises constitutional concerns according to the Minnesota Legislative Auditor, whose office issued a program audit of the agency in March.

The new House measure would establish a commission with an advisory role only, which would make spending recommendations to the Legislature— similar to other state commissions, such as the Legislative and Citizens Commission on Minnesota Resources.

Iron Range legislators, who stand to lose an important base of political power if the House measure becomes law, reacted angrily to the May 12 passage of the bill. In a joint statement issued shortly after the vote, Rep. Rob Ecklund, DFL-International Falls, and Jason Metsa, DFL-Virginia, called the bill “a drastic overreach” and accused Republicans of seeking to micromanage local spending decisions on the Iron Range. “Here we go again with another political assault on the people of northern Minnesota,” the legislators said in their statement. “It seems the GOP’s only interest in Iron Rangers is using them to earn political headlines, or to take money from them. In this case, they seek to do both.”

Hackbarth denied any interest in micromanaging agency spending decisions, although he noted that the IRRR is the only state, cabinet-level agency that has no direct oversight by the Legislature as a whole. The Legislative Auditor, in the March audit report, sharply criticized the agency for lack of oversight in a whole host of areas. “I just want people to have a better idea where the money is going,” he said.

Hackbarth said the current arrangement, where Iron Range legislators have direct authority over the spending of millions of dollars in project funding has made it difficult for those on the Iron Range who support greater oversight to speak up. “Behind the scenes, many people up there want to see some changes,” he said. “But people are afraid to speak up or they won’t get their local project funded. They’ve been retaliated against before, and they’ve been threatened before.”

Ecklund said he’s not aware of any local groundswell for major changes in the structure of the agency. “If he’s hearing from people, we don’t know who they are,” he said. Ecklund said the changes approved by the Senate fully address the constitutional concerns raised by the legislative auditor. Those provisions, included in the Senate tax bill, would keep the current IRRRB governing structure in place, while making the board advisory-only, with final approval granted to the governor and the IRRRB commissioner. “The Hackbarth bill just goes too far,” Ecklund said.

Hackbarth said he hopes the issue becomes part of end-of-session negotiations. As it stands, Gov. Dayton has sided with Iron Range DFLers in opposing the House changes to the IRRRB, which puts the Hackbarth bill at a disadvantage.

But Hackbarth said the Senate provision is an acknowledgement that the agency’s governance needs some kind of reform and he said he looks forward to working with Iron Range legislators to craft a workable solution.